BTC For Palestine is the perfect example of an endeavor powered by Bitcoin that strikes right to the heart of what Bitcoin is supposed to be all about. Money functioning without trusted intermediaries. The entire point of Bitcoin was to give people a way to transact with their money that no one could disrupt, insert themselves into the middle of, or rent seek off of.
That is the exact situation Gazans find themselves in for the last year. Completely cut off from the rest of the world, incapable of making any form of payment that isn’t using cash without depending on exactly those rent seekers who have inserted themselves in the middle of every digital payment being processed globally. The difference between them and the average Westerner is that they are dependent on aid to simply survive, and meet basic necessities. They aren’t simply annoyed or griping over inconvenient service or annoying fees.
These people are being slaughtered as if they were game animals locked in a pen, it is literally systematic genocide. They have been completely cut off from traditional payment rails to accept donations for food, water, and other necessities. Even UN supplied aid is being seized and disrupted. Bitcoin is literally the only option for people who wish to donate money to help people in Gaza with nothing.
This is one of the most important demonstrations of why Bitcoin is a necessity in the world since Wikileaks first started accepting it 13 years ago in 2011 in response to the banking and payment processing brigade against them.
Back then it was a direct fight over the ability to use information to hold the government to account for their actions and deceptions. Now it is a matter of helping the people directly suffering under the actions of those governments that continue to avoid being held accountable.
Yusef Mahmoud, a cab driver before the genocide began, has been able to help buy food and water for thousands of Gazan’s left destitute and with nothing for the last year because of Bitcoin. One man, with a means to accept financial assistance from around the world that no one can disrupt or stop, has been able to make that big of a difference in thousands of peoples’ lives.
This is what Bitcoin is for, functioning as a tool to enable us to stand up to what governments and institutions impose on us without their ability to stop that tool from functioning. It’s not simply a new asset class, or a toy for Wall Street, it is a foundation for revolutionary self-organization to solve the problems that governments either can’t, or actively create themselves.
It’s for us, not them.
You can donate here to help the people of Gaza.